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512. Our Future Southeastern Turkish Frontiers
- Author:
- Nathalie Tocci
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
- Abstract:
- Today's southeast Turkey has historically been the homeland of a large number of diverse ethnic groups. Nowadays, in many town and villages of the region the largest ethnic group is Kurdish. Turkish officials under Turgut Özal in the 1990s for the first time admitted there may be around 10 million Kurds living in Turkey. Other estimates indicate a Kurdish population of around 15 million. Adding to this figure the additional 10 million or so Kurds living in Iran, Iraq, Syria and the former Soviet Union, the Kurdish people represent the largest ethnic group in the world without a state of their own.
- Topic:
- Security and NATO
- Political Geography:
- Iraq, Europe, Iran, Turkey, Middle East, and Syria
513. Issues for Europe -- Post-11 September
- Author:
- Daniel Gros and Michael Emerson
- Publication Date:
- 09-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
- Abstract:
- Ten days now after 11 September, the policy agenda becomes a huge set of interlocking issues – political, strategic, economic. The present note makes a first survey of these issues, and expresses opinions on some of them. However the main purpose is to establish a template or framework to help monitor and evaluate the evolution of the world's response to this massive event. It will be updated and revised in further CEPS Policy Briefs as the story unfolds.
- Topic:
- Security and Terrorism
- Political Geography:
- Europe
514. Institutions Structural Unemployment: Do Capital-Market Imperfections Matter?
- Author:
- Ansgar Belke and Rainer Fehn
- Publication Date:
- 11-2000
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
- Abstract:
- This paper analyses whether differences in institutional structures on capital markets contribute to explaining why some OECD-countries, in particular the Anglo-Saxon countries, have been much more successful over the last two decades in producing employment growth and in reducing unemployment than most continental-European OECD-countries. It is argued that the often-blamed labour market rigidities alone, while important, do not provide a satisfactory explanation for these differences across countries and over time. Financial constraints are potentially important obstacles against creating new firms and jobs and thus against coping well with structural change and against moving successfully toward the “new economy”. Highly developed venture capital markets should help to alleviate such financial constraints. This view that labour-market institutions should be supplemented by capital market imperfections for explaining differences in employment performances is supported by our panel data analysis, in which venture capital turns out to be a significant institutional variable.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Europe
515. The Changing Nature and Determinants of EU Trade Policies
- Author:
- Paul Brenton
- Publication Date:
- 10-2000
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
- Abstract:
- EU trade policies and the environment in which they are determined are now considerably different from when the EU came into being in the 1950s. With the exceptions of agriculture and textiles and clothing, tariffs and quantitative restrictions on trade in goods have been reduced to historically very low levels. But trade policy is now about much more than border restrictions upon trade in goods. Trade in services and the impact of national differences in regulatory regimes are now firmly on the trade policy agenda. This paper describes the current multilateral and preferential trade policies of the EU. It highlights the increasing importance of regulatory issues and the fact that some of these are being addressed outside of both multilateral and standard bilateral free trade agreements. This reflects the mixed motives behind EU trade policies and that for trade with certain regions the typical political economy factors framing trade policy are no longer relevant. For example, liberalisation of transatlantic trade, in the limited form at present of mutual recognition of conformity assessment, is being strongly driven by large corporate business. This trend suggests that the pyramid of preferences usually used to depict EU trade policies is becoming very distorted.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, Human Rights, International Trade and Finance, Migration, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Europe
516. The 'Cyprus Question': Reshaping Community Identities and Elite Interests within a Wider European Framework
- Author:
- Nathalie Tocci
- Publication Date:
- 09-2000
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
- Abstract:
- Since 1963 the 'Cyprus question' has proved one of the most intractable inter-communal conflicts within the international system. Despite the assiduous involvement of the United Nations, the long list of negotiations and inter-communal talks have failed to yield any concrete agreement. What are the roots and causes of the 'Cyprus question' and what explains the international community's repeated failures to resolve it? This paper argues that the causes of the 'Cyprus question' comprise two crucial dimensions. First, the conflict is caused by the underlying inter-communal dispute between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, which is in turn triggered both by real and by imaginary conditions of division and disparity. Second, the 'Cyprus question' is the product of a delicate balance of elite interests. Clearly, a solution to the problem must reflect both dimensions. An initial settlement that represents preferable payoffs than the current status quo to both community elites, must be brokered. Thereafter it is possible to tackle the real conditions of division and disparity, which cause the underlying inter-communal conflict. The overarching framework of prosperity and stability provided by the European Union could contribute in both respects by facilitating the formulation and implementation of an initial inter-elite settlement and accelerating the ultimate eradication of the underlying conflict between peoples.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, NATO, and Terrorism
- Political Geography:
- Europe
517. The Future of the Caucasus after the Second Chechen War
- Author:
- Michael Emerson, Nathalie Tocci, Bruno Coppieters, Alexandru Liono, Sergiu Celac, Brenda Shaffer, Thomas Waelde, Sergei Vinogradov, Armando Zamora, and Terry Adams
- Publication Date:
- 07-2000
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
- Abstract:
- The problems surrounding the Chechen conflict are indeed many and difficult to tackle. This paper aims at unveiling some of the mysteries covering the issue of so-called “Islamic fundamentalism” in Chechnya. A comparison of the native Sufi branch of Islam and the imported Wahhaby ideology is made, in order to discover the contradictions and the conflicts that the spreading of the latter inflicted in the Chechen society. Furthermore, the paper investigates the main challenges President Aslan Maskhadov was facing at the beginning of his mandate, and the way he managed to cope with them. The paper does not attempt to cover all the aspects of the Chechen problem; nevertheless, a quick enumeration of other factors influencing the developments in Chechnya in the past three years is made.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, NATO, and Terrorism
- Political Geography:
- Europe
518. One Size Must Fit All: National Divergences in a Monetary Union
- Author:
- Daniel Gros and Carsten Hefeker
- Publication Date:
- 07-2000
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
- Abstract:
- What policy objective should a common central bank in a heterogeneous monetary union pursue? Should it base its decisions on the EU-wide average of inflation and growth or should it instead focus on (appropriately weighted) national welfare losses based on national rates of inflation and growth? We find that a central bank that minimises the sum of national welfare losses reacts less to common shocks and that this can lead to higher average union-wide expected welfare, if the variability of common shocks is large relative to the inflation bias. But for countries with a transmission mechanism close to the average, welfare can actually be lower in this case. The inflationary bias depends on the interaction between the transmission mechanism and distortions in labour markets.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, Human Rights, International Trade and Finance, Migration, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Europe
519. The International Trade of Multinational Firms: The Empirical Behaviour of Intrafirm Trade in a Gravity Equation Model
- Author:
- Kimberly A. Clausing
- Publication Date:
- 06-2000
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
- Abstract:
- Multinational firms are an increasingly important part of international economic integration. In recent years, foreign direct investment has been increasing at a rate that exceeds both the rate of growth of international trade and that of income. For many countries, the sales of affiliates of multinational firms have long dwarfed the value of trade. For example, in 1997, European Union country firms exported $283 billion in products to the United States. In the same year, affiliates of E.U.-based multinational firms sold $816 billion worth of products in the United States, almost three times the value of exports.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, Human Rights, International Trade and Finance, Migration, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe
520. Technical Barriers to Trade in the European Union: Importance for Accession Countries
- Author:
- Paul Brenton, John Sheehy, and Marc Vancauteren
- Publication Date:
- 04-2000
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
- Abstract:
- With trade in industrial products between the EU and the CEECs now essentially free of tariff and non-tariff restrictions, the principal impact of accession to the EU on trade flows will be through access to the Single Market of the EU. A key element of this will be the removal of technical barriers to trade. In this paper we try and highlight the importance of technical barriers to trade between the EU and the various CEECs, distinguishing sectors according to the different approaches to the removal of these barriers in the EU: mutual recognition, detailed harmonisation (old approach) and minimum requirements (new approach). We utilise two sources of information on technical regulations: a sectoral classification from a previous study of the impact of the Single Market and our own detailed translation of EU product related directives into the relevant tariff codes. The analysis suggests that the importance of technical barriers varies considerably across the CEECs. The adjustment implications of access to the Single Market are likely to be greatest for those most advanced in their accession negotiations.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, Human Rights, International Trade and Finance, Migration, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Europe